Prioritization and Investigation of the Direction of Influence and Suscep-tibility of Components of "Information Literacy Skills" Based on Tech-niques of "Multi-criteria Decision-making" and "Paired Comparisons"

Purpose: The study aims to weight, determine the priority, and investigate the direction of influencing and susceptibility of the components of "information literacy skills" by considering the importance of the information context of the community in training these skills in order to eliminate their gaps and promote the "information literacy skills" of the community. Methodology: This is an applied quantitative study, using "multi-criteria decision-making" methods based on techniques of "Paired Comparisons" through Dalala Dematel - by applying MATLAB software. Findings: The results of Dematel matrix investigated the influence and susceptibility of "information literacy skills" and measured their weights. Moreover, results showed the priority of training of components to improve and eradicate the gaps of the "information literacy skills" respectively as follows: "Information access skills," "information assessment skills," "information use skills," "information dissemination skills," "Skills of understanding and recognizing the information need," and "information combination skills." Conclusion: Using "paired comparisons" techniques as a new approach in the field of "information literacy studies" could be beneficial in deciding to train "information literacy skills" in different information contexts. Weighting and studying the influence and susceptibility of components of "information literacy skills" on each other showed that the components that are ranked in the first priorities include more relative weights and in comparison, with next components are more important in terms of the need for education and promotion.  Informing decision-makers on the influence measure of components on each other has a significant and a prominent role in deciding and adopting appropriate trends in training "information literacy skills" based on the importance and priority of skills, and can provide guidance to policymakers, instructors, and researchers in this field.